The present invention generally relates to video production systems and, more particularly, to the production of video effects.
Producers, or stagers, of live events may enhance these events by providing a high quality video experience that is delivered on as large a projection screen as possible to the audience. Typically, the projection screen is arranged in back of, or above, the location of the live events and multiple video outputs are projected, often side-by-side onto the projection screen.
To meet this particular need, a number of vendors provide equipment that provide such large projection screen effects. Unfortunately, these systems require either specialized hardware or have real-time limitations. For example, systems like the Montage from Vista and the Encore from Barco/Folsom provide large projection screen effects by requiring use of an internal large pixel buffer. In these systems, individual video outputs are defined as viewports into this buffer, and directly output the respective contents of the viewport onto a particular portion of the large projection screen. All operations (such as flying video picture-in-pictures (PIPs) and keys around) are done with one processor in this one pixel space. Another company, Dataton, has a video product switcher called Watchout™ that also delivers large projection screen effects. However, video material has to be pre-produced (rendered) in advance of the live event and, as such, does not support true real-time video production—it only supports live video inserts into the pre-rendered windows.